Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 5
V.
When wine began to lose its flavour, and Eve lost her one front tooth, I was seized with the desire to solve the enigma of life. I spent five years dissecting a fly's leg, for I had heard that one must seek the great in the infinitesimal, and that the manifold scheme of creation lay in one blade of grass; but when at the end of five years I took a rest and lifted my eyes to the heavens, I discovered I was sitting in a hole deep down in the ground, and that I had lost sight of the whole world, and that it was only with difficulty that I could catch a glimpse of a strip of blue sky by straining back my head. So I left the fly's leg alone and climbed out of the hole. But I was almost dazed by the light of day, and I sat in the midst of the sunshine and richly coloured nature blind as an owl.
In the seventh year I met an old wise man who told me that what I had supposed to be the tree of knowledge only bore unripe fruit. Then the old wise man taught me that absolutely no materials were needed to build up one's house other than the mathematical lines of pure reason. So I hammered away right merrily, and it went apace like a noiseless dance. But one day a tiny zephyr wafted by, and the whole concern fluttered away, and I watched it floating in the air like a rift of gossamer.
Then I shook the old wise man by his old white beard and bade him go and order himself a coffin, if it be that he could not fashion one for himself out of his mathematical dots and lines. And I closed my eyes and lay musing in an agony of soul. Night came, and suddenly I felt the pain snap as the husk about a seed, and I felt something grow in me, something that was sinking its roots into my very heart, rising as sap through my veins; and leaves, uncurled out of their sheaths, and they had colour and form but not of this world, and when morning came I saw in my soul's dawning a blossom, the great half-opened blossom of a strange flower. And of this flower there is only one stock, and it is my blood that waters its roots, and the plant grows inside, invisible to all but me. But I know that when the blossom opens I shall find at its core the great Unknown.